


High School Reunion

by TheVeganTargaryen



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, M/M, but it turns real pretty fast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVeganTargaryen/pseuds/TheVeganTargaryen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry needs a date to his high school reunion. Oliver decides to help him out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High School Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of fudged Barry's age a little to make this work. In reality, he probably wouldn't be having his high school reunion for another couple of years, given he's my age in canon, and mine's not until 2017.

“So, tell me how you got roped into this again?” Felicity asked.

Oliver was getting tired of telling the story, but he obliged her anyways. “I was down in Central with Barry, and we were at Jitters—did you know they named a coffee after him?—and he ran into some people he knew from high school.”

“Yeah, you’d mentioned that part,” she replied, swiveling away from her computer screens to look at him, one eyebrow raised. “What I’m still not quite understanding is the leap from that to Barry taking you to his high school reunion as his _date_.” There was something pointed in her tone, something with undercurrents of questions he’d probably rather fight a dozen metahumans than answer.

Oliver needed something to do with his hands. Luckily, there was never any shortage of that down in the lair, and his bow needed to be restrung. He drew it in closer, beginning the somewhat complicated process of unstringing the compound-recurve hybrid. It was one of the only downfalls to the style: with as much use as he got out of the weapon, it needed to be restrung at _least_ twice a year, which meant disassembling the whole cable system. His old standard recurve used to be simpler.

A lot of things used to be simpler.

“They were giving him shit about how he used to ‘fawn all over Iris.’ Their words, not mine.” Focusing on the process in front of him was tedious but not hard, just distracting enough that he could work on it but still participate in the conversation. “They weren’t exactly friends of his. Barry lied, said he had a date. They didn’t believe him. They asked who he was dating, and he just… he kind of froze.” Oliver thought maybe it was the wrong time to mention that it had both been kind of adorable and filled him with the kind of protective streak normally reserved for his closest friends and family.

When Barry Allen had become one of his closest friends, Oliver couldn’t say. When he’d started associating Barry Allen and words like “adorable” he also couldn’t say. So he kept at the task at hand, finally removing the string, frayed beyond all help of wax.

“Oh my God. So you guys are basically dating.”

“What? No. How did you even get that?” He had to admit, the amount of glee in the voice of the woman he was just recently professing his love to was a bit unflattering. “We’re _pretending to date. It’s different.”_

“Mhm. ‘Pretending.’”

Oliver wished his subconscious sounded less like Felicity.

\--------

However anxious Oliver was about what, exactly, he’d gotten himself into, Barry was worse.

“I don’t think we should go in,” he said for what Oliver estimated was the thousandth time since they’d left for the reunion. “I mean, there’s gotta be something he Flash needs to be doing right now…”

“Not since the last time you checked in with Joe, which was two minutes ago, and he told you—again—that the CCPD’s got this for the night.”

“You sure?” Barry asked, turning a hopeful gaze in his direction, all huge green eyes and wide, nervous smile. “I’ll even let you shoot someone.”

“Tempting,” Oliver confessed, “but no. I haven’t endured two weeks of my team asking me when the wedding is so we can _not_ go to this thing.”

“Yours too, huh?”

Oliver chuckled, nodding, and put the car in park. “Come on. Time to face the music.”

It wasn’t that bad, really. But Oliver had a much less biased view of the poorly-decorated gymnasium than his date. For Oliver, it was nothing more than a watered-down version of the many, many events he’d suffered through back when he was Robert and Moira Queen’s son, the Queen family scion.

_“Is that Oliver Queen?”_

He heard a couple of whispers as they walked by, keeping a steady hand on the small of Barry’s back. The younger man was practically vibrating with tension, and Oliver had to calm him down before he bolted out of there (it was an all-too-real possibility when one’s date had superspeed).

_“He’s here with Allen?”_

“Isn’t he running for mayor?”

Barry turned to him immediately with a look of—was that indignation?—and tugged him over to a corner. “Oliver, your campaign. I completely forgot. If this gets out that…”

“What, that I’m dating a man?” Oliver returned, amused, determinedly ignoring that small spark of satisfaction he felt at saying that out loud. “That I’m dating you?” Okay, now he was just saying it to hear the words.

Fuck.

“Well, yeah,” Barry replied, shifting awkwardly.

“Barry, you know my history. The press has their pick of scandals, and this one’s not even gonna be on their radars.” He thought he might bring up Tommy and the fact that he knew from experience but then decided against it. Probably not the right approach. “Besides,” he continued, “if you haven’t noticed, I’m still running unopposed, and I’m the only consistently alive candidate we even have.”

Barry laughed but immediately stopped himself. “Sorry. That’s not funny.”

“It kind of is.” But they weren’t here to talk about Oliver’s campaign. “But we’ve been standing in the corner for too long, and if I’ve only got one night to pretend to be your boyfriend—I mean—you know… to help you show up your high school rivals, then… we should… do that,” he finished lamely. _Is this how Felicity feels all the time?_

Either way, it had the pleasant effect of getting Barry to smile, genuinely, for the first time all night. “If you’re sure you’re up for the task, then.”

“I’m up for it,” he returned, before realizing that coupled with the smirk on his face could definitely be taken more than one way. And then he realized he definitely meant it more than one way.

And _then_ , unexpectedly, Barry stepped in closer, and his lips were covering Oliver’s, and all Oliver could do was lean into the kiss. It wasn’t quite chaste enough for the setting, but Oliver had always been of more of a “fuck propriety” type of mindset. It was nice to be reminded of that. But all too soon Barry was pulling back, wearing a bolder grin than he would have anticipated. “Just making sure you’re up for it,” he said before turning to make his way into the crowd of alumni.

“Keep that up, and I will be. Literally,” he muttered under his breath, almost positive Barry heard him.

By the third group of people they’d found themselves talking to, Oliver was positive Barry was determined to test every last ounce of his willpower. He was very handsy as a fake boyfriend, with frequent touches to Oliver’s arms and chest, an occasional hand splayed over his abs. Oliver, in turn, was getting quickly accustomed to playing the doting partner—to standing with an arm wrapped around Barry, to redirecting the conversation to highlighting the other man’s wealth of accomplishments that didn’t include the Flash (and putting in a good word for his superhero alter ego sometimes, too.

He was surprised to find he didn’t hate it.

He actually kind of liked it, especially when Barry decided he’d rather be kissing Oliver than talking. The number of times that happened was definitely increasing exponentially as well, and it was finally when they were starting to border more on PDA than proof they were actually dating that Oliver pulled back just enough to have room to talk.

“We should get out of here.” Because that ‘literally’ comment was turning out to be more prediction than speculation.

“It’s only 9:15.”

“Then we should get out of here for a little while. We don’t have to go far.”

Barry said he knew a place. Not too far. Still on the school grounds, though.

And that was why, later, they could never agree on which one of them was to blame for getting kicked out of the reunion.


End file.
